During the past decade, the number of professionals that “telecommute” (i.e., work at home or other “virtual office” locations) has increased significantly. Although the proliferation of various types of computing and telephony equipment has enabled these workers to be effective, there remain a number of office-related advantages that cannot, without great expense, be duplicated at home. Additionally, in situations where an individual spends a significant amount of time traveling, it becomes even more difficult to provide certain advantages, such as PBX-based telecommunication features as are found in most conventional office environments. A private branch exchange (PBX) switch is commonly known in the art as a system useful in providing certain calling features such as abbreviated dialing, call transfer, hold, mute, and others, within an office complex served by the PBX switch. One exemplary PBX switch is the Definity™ switch sold by Avaya, Inc.
A PBX switch may be located “on site” as customer premise equipment—CPE—(one example of CPE being the Definity switch sold by Avaya) or located within the communications network and used by one or more different customers. An exemplary network-based PBX is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,742,596 issued to Y. Baratz et al. on Apr. 21, 1998. With a network-based PBX, the various office locations may be referred to as “remote” in the sense that the physical office locations need to establish a link with the network-based PBX to obtain the desired functionality. The office stations themselves, however, are equipped with the traditional PBX station set equipment. The actual location of the PBX switch, therefore, is of no concern to the office worker.
In some situations, “telecommuters” have incurred the expense of adding an additional phone line, or ISDN, to handle the increase in telephony traffic associated with working at home. While this solution is acceptable in some situations, it quickly becomes an expensive alternative for the employer. Further, the “traveling” employee has no “home office” within which to install such equipment, remaining disadvantaged with respect to the personnel at a traditional work location. Indeed, the technology deployed at the home office may “lag” the latest PBX-based innovations found in the office.
As described in our pending application Ser. No. 09/370,766, an individual at a location “remote” from the office may have “PBX-like” capabilities, with all communications being controlled by a remote office platform, linked to the remote worker. In particular, the remote office platform is linked to the office PBX system. Features such as abbreviated dialing for in-house calls, call forwarding, call transfer, hold, three-way calling, secretarial pick-up, and more, are provided at a remote location where an individual can connect to the remote platform and have a user interface display available. The graphical user interface (GUI), in a preferred embodiment, is a “soft phone”, displaying a PBX station-like set-up including a handset, call feature buttons, a message center, and the like.
The system as described in this pending application uses a remote office platform that communicates with both the office (or network) PBX and a data network coupled to the remote office location. The remote office platform includes the software necessary to “push” the GUI to the remote device and also comprises a database including necessary information regarding each employee permitted to access the “virtual PBX” system. Once activated by a remote worker, the remote office platform communicates with the office PBX so as to communicate all PBX-based requests from the remote location back to the office PBX. In the other direction, all incoming calls to the remote worker's PBX extension are forwarded by the PBX to the remote office platform and, ultimately, to the remote location. The term “office PBX” as used throughout this discussion is considered to include a customer-premise PBX, a network-based PBX (perhaps being shared by a number of different subscribers), or any other suitable PBX architecture.
In operation of this arrangement, a remote worker first establishes authenticated communication with the remote office platform. Voice connectivity between the office PBX and remote worker can be provided over whatever telephony connection exists at the remote location (POTS over PSTN, cable, fixed wireless, among others). Data connectivity, used for transferring all call requests between the remote worker and the remote office platform, as well as enabling the “soft phone” graphical user interface at the remote end, may be provided by any suitable data network including, but not limited to, the Internet.
Although the system as disclosed in our pending application is extremely proficient in allowing a “remote worker” access to many of the available office features, once the worker “logs out” of the system, all of the interconnect information is lost, and the worker must go through the entire process of logging in to be re-connected. While this is not very problematic for instances where the remote worker remains at the same off-site location, for those individuals that spend any quantity of time “on the road” or at multiple locations, it may become burdensome to constantly require the worker to re-activate the remote office system.
Thus, a need remains in the remote office environment for addressing the mobility of most remote workers, allowing such individuals to remain in communication with a remote office platform and modify/control the communication between the worker and the office connection.